The Deconstructive Thinking In Eugene O'Neill's Plays And Its Sources

Eugene O'Neill has been internationally recognized as the quintessential American dramatist of the twentieth-century world stage. He is the inaugurator of the America drama, and is called the "founder of the American Drama" and the "American Shakespeare". O'Neill and his plays have received great attention from readers and scholars all over the world. A polygraph as he is, he has composed more than 50 plays in his life. He has won the Pulitzer Prize four times for his talents and contributions to the American stage, and is the only dramatist ever to win a Nobel Prize in the United States. The themes of his plays are original. O'Neill has presented readers with colorful and various artistic styles. All these have made Eugene O'Neill a unique and larruping playwright in the history of the American Drama.O'Neill has developed a new style and a new method in digging out people's inner world, and has made several wonderful innovations and probes into the composing of dramas. He has kept on making experiments and explorations in a many ways as possible in his dramatic creation. His plays have reflected his unwearied quest for the meaning of life, and his clinging pursuit to art. He has readily accepted the modern philosophical and literary theories, and has used them in his writing. He has made great contributions in creating modern techniques, and in developing new themes. O'Neill's plays represent his deconstructive thinking.Compared with other playwrights of his time, Eugene O'Neill has observed the society in his unique angle of view: what he was interested in was the relationship between human and the God. He has set his attention on Hylicism's erosion to people's minds, which according to him, is the origin of all sufferings and pains in the modern society. He has tried to resist the Hylicism by presenting people's mental sufferings. He emphasized the importance of spiritual comfort to human's existence, and sought for a way to solve the social problems in people's inner world. He attributed a good many social problems and conflicts to the contradictories that exist in people's mind and thoughts. O'Neill has tended to clear up social problems, and torelieve the sufferings of people in modern society by reconstructing people's souls. All pains and problems (greed, jealousy, hatred, and various kinds of prejudices) are living in people's minds. Problems concerning human's original sin have been the main matters that appear very frequently in O'Neill's plays.O'Neill has referenced a lot from modern theories of Nietzsche and Freud, and he has also absorbed some wisdom from Taoism, the traditional Chinese philosophy, and Buddhism. These modern and conventional ideas have helped him to break through the restrictions of the long-existing dualistic thinking, and his thoughts are deconstructive. His ideas on the relationship between reality and pipe dream are good examples. O'Neill emphasized the necessity of pipe dreams, which for long have been marginalized and suppressed by the Realism; therefore, he has successfully overturned the existing orders between reality and pipe dreams. In his eyes, pipe dreams should no longer be under the rule of reality. So, the absolute conflicts between realism and illusion have to be cleared up. And the two are supposed to be in harmonious coexistence in homogeneity, parity and equality. O'Neill has cleared up many dualistic oppositions in his plays, and thus some of plays have Deconstruction features.Chapter One aims to show O'Neill's dec nsixuctive thinking in his middle plays. O'Neill's middle plays often deal with the themes of sins and punishment, human's original sin, comeuppance, modern people's desire for religion and the criticism towards Hylicism from the viewpoints of religion. Dualistic oppositions are cleared up with the concepts of the original sin shown in The Hairy Ape and All God's Chillun Got Wings. O'Neill deconstructs the oppositions, such as material and spirit, black and white, by highlighting the importance of man's inner world.Chapter Two focuses on the deconstructive thinking in O'Neill's late plays, such as The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into the Night. In the former, Freudian psychoanalysis is used to overturn dualistic oppositions between rationality and irrationality. O'Neill has been deeply influenced by Freudian psychologies, and he spares special interest in Freud's discussion of pipe dream that the majority of the human being have ever and again composed the pipe dream. In the latter, Taoistconcepts of yin and yang, and the Adjustment of Controversies help to deconstruct the conflicts between past and present, love and hate, etc.Chapter Three concentrates on the analysis of the origin and source of O'Neill's Deconstruction thoughts. His deconstruction characteristics comes from three aspects: the theory of the Original Sin from the Holy Bible; the Psychoanalysis theories of Sigmund Freud; and the Chinese Taoism. The unification and fusing of three different ideological theories have built up the bridge between Eugene O'Neill and Deconstruction thoughts.As a conclusion, I shall draw upon the foregoing chapters to shed further light on the deconstructive features of O'Neill's plays and the three sources of his deconstructive methods. And I will analyze the worthiness and meaning of O'Neill's deconstructive thinking.